Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

  “Fruit, parona?”

  “You understand Venetian!”

  And she also understands that the peasant was bound to have planted the fruit tree in the first place. She does not know terms like “pilfering” or “penal code,” but she watches and understands everything. She has no armor, it is immediate, life penetrates her, and she cannot protect herself from this compassion. What was it her mother used to say? My little girl…My little girl is gentle and good. My little girl…She looks at Parona Michieli and suddenly understands this woman, her spitefulness and her unhappiness.

  * * *

  —

  She confides in Clementina, Stefano’s wife, on the subject. They communicate as best they can with few words, a lot of gesticulating, and some explosive laughter. But Bakhita does not feel much like laughing on this occasion and is not sure how to broach the subject. She points to Clementina’s youngest, little Melia, talks about the child and of Parona Michieli, establishing an association between them. Clementina listens attentively, puts on her hat, and indicates that Bakhita should go with her. They walk across Zianigo, come out of the village onto scrubby little paths, with the sound of invisible water between the stones, and on either side heavy low walls, extensive farm buildings the size of zarebas, and the huge patrician homes of the local nobility. Bakhita likes these walks, the smells of blackberries and vetch, the birds she sees for the first time and others she recognizes, blackbirds, skylarks, and eagles far off in the mountains. She is always afraid she will frighten someone, will be struck with a stone, but tells herself that if they see her often enough, the locals will grow accustomed to her and may one day allow her to approach them. Thanks to Parona Michieli, she is dressed like a European, has pretty clips in her tightly curled hair, and, for big family outings in a horse-drawn carriage with the Michielis, wears her scarlet dress, and even those who are afraid of her say so: She is beautiful. Astonishing though it is. Terrifying though she is. She is beautiful. And does not know it.

  * * *

  —

  They climb a little way up the hillside, Bakhita hears the cows before she sees them and then all of a sudden…the little girl watching over the herd, near the river. A very young girl lost in her solitude, waggling her stick which is as flimsy as her own naked legs, and occasionally whistling and giving a short sharp cry. Bakhita points her out to Clementina and then pats her own chest. This little girl is who she was. She remembers this, and it is as if she is seeing herself, meeting herself. It was a long time ago and it is now. She would still know how to do it, take the herd to the river in the morning and bring them back to the village in the evening. Clementina understands and congratulates her, she will tell Stefano that same evening: “Bakhita knows how to look after cattle.” They walk on, and Bakhita turns around, gazes at her past that has suddenly appeared in Italy, time turned upside down.

  * * *

  —

  When Clementina opens the gate to the cemetery, Bakhita instinctively lowers her eyes. She knows where she is. She saw small cemeteries set up by Catholic missions in Khartoum. This is not for her and she feels uncomfortable, it is a forbidden place, like being in a garden where she has no right to venture. Clementina leads her to a tiny grave. Even before Clementina points them out, Bakhita understands the words she cannot read.

  “Carlo Michieli. Giovanni Michieli.”

  Here lies Parona Michieli’s unhappiness. She knew it.

  * * *

  —

  That evening, Bakhita serves her master and mistress, they are dining in their large empty dining room, they make no eye contact, eat mutton, vegetables, rice, fruit, and bread, drink wine and coffee, all the things their peasants have cultivated and will never eat or drink. Bakhita watches the parona. Wishes she could tell her not to worry. Knows there is another child in her. No one should wait for a child in fear. She stands there solidly, watching her.

  “She is slow, so slow!” Maria says to her husband. And, running out of patience, she explodes, “What?”

  And the Moretta’s deep voice risks a shy, “I’m here, parona.” Augusto smothers his laughter in his napkin. The parona flushes and looks away. So no one sees her tears.

  This child is something they will wait for together. The mistress and her servant. Maria has not forgotten Genoa, little Indir’s distress when he was separated from the Moretta. She knows he crossed deserts and seas with her, but also thanks to her, Maria is in little doubt that it was not her husband or his friend who took care of the child! The consul gave her Bakhita like a consolation prize, but this was in fact what she wanted, this Negress. And not merely on a whim.

  * * *

  —

  Augusto has not guessed that for several weeks now Maria has been pregnant again. He thinks her pallor and sickness are part of her arsenal, his wife is hysterical, nothing to be done about it. She knows he would run away if she told him she was, once more, expecting a baby. As if it were not his, only hers, a child conceived by its mother and belonging only to her. He thinks the two dead children are her shame, hers alone. With her, children do not survive. That peasant children should die is customary and logical, they are fathered by drinkers of contraband brandy, by filthy, illiterate, immoral eaters of polenta. But Maria! She’s not equipped to keep a child alive. The first time, granted, there is no defense against measles, but the second? She didn’t even manage to keep him alive inside her, she gave birth to a dead baby. What came out of her was death. “God called him back into His fold, too,” the archpriest said. And that was when Maria decided it was over, she did not want to hear another word about this God who needed her sons more than she did. Before the second child was given extreme unction, she had given him her father-in-law’s name, Giovanni, and her breasts had been bound, it would not have been Maria who nursed him anyway, but those bound breasts hurt her appallingly, much more than when Carlo was born and she had watched him suckled by fat Alessia with her impassive eyes and immoderate bosom. She loathed them all, and their God along with them. God here and God there, like a linguistic twitch, an idol that inveigled its way into everything, meddled with everything, and to whom “she had to offer her sons,” as if they were His.

  This time, with this pregnancy that the Moretta alone has noticed, she will hide the evidence from them. So that no one—not Stefano, not his family, not the parish priest, nor their friends—can guess. She knows what people think of her, she is a foreigner and her husband would do better to leave her for a good strong Italian girl, a mother who would go to mass on Sundays, knit for the destitute, and follow processions in honor of the Virgin. Like other women. And like other women, she would bow her head under the weight of her sorrow, wear a black veil, and make offerings to the child-eating Lord.

  * * *

  —

  This Moretta knows nothing of all this, she is silent and can peddle no gossip. Or even any truth. And so, one evening, Maria asks her to open the door to the wardrobe in her bedroom and indicates that she should take out the big blue box and set it down here, on the table, she has something to show her. And now, talking to this servant in Russian, she tells the story. Of the brief and beautiful life of little Carlo. She takes out the clothes, which she kept for the second child, because before she had even dried her tears, her mother-in-law had told her to “make another” straightaway, as if she had simply bungled a recipe. She did not want to make another, and that is surely why the second child was born dead. A tired little stand-in. Unable even to open his eyes. And when she took him in her arms, it felt as if it was his soul she held to her, a snuffed-out soul that wanted only to be forgotten. But Carlo! Carlito had grown and lived for four years! She describes in her own language the life as a mother that she had with him. Because she was his mother, whatever they say about her. She describes his first steps, his first words, the first little injuries and minor illnesses that she treated, yes, she could do all that! And she shows her his clothes by way of proof, a
sks Bakhita to touch them, see how beautiful they are, and, more important, how real. She has been forbidden to talk of this child, as if he reminded her of “bad memories,” but she wants to talk of him, and to tell this Moretta, who listens to her speaking Russian and does not hide her tears, tell her what a good son he was and what a good mother she was. She likes to see Bakhita cry, because if even a foreigner suffers, well then, it’s perfectly natural that she should be sad, isn’t it? It’s not an illness, is it? She’s not mad, surely? She gets carried away, speaks more and more quickly, more and more loudly, mixing Venetian with Russian, and French, and English, which she also speaks, “Guarda! Touch them! Don’t be frightened!,” and she waves around his drawings, his teddy bears, his bonnets, his little socks, “So small!,” with one hand over her mouth, she is laughing now, because these socks are so very small! She cannot stop laughing, her body rocking with laughter. “So small! Mio cuore! Sertse maïyo! Amore mio!,” speaking in every language, and her heartbreak overflows.

  * * *

  —

  Bakhita can hear, from all the way back in Taweisha, the screams of the mother whose baby she touched, his tiny, achingly pretty foot. She remembers she was beaten for it, and that the baby cried too. She comes up to the parona gently and takes her in her arms, it is an unexpected gesture, a forbidden gesture, which simply means: Rest. The parona takes refuge in the Moretta’s arms and sobs. She has finally been given the right to grieve.

  The child is born on February 3, 1886. The master had left Italy three months earlier, to return to Suakin, whence he writes his wife bleak notes anticipating her future unraveling, and tells her to look after herself.

  * * *

  —

  When she goes into labor, Parona Michieli asks the Moretta to stay by her side, and for three days now Bakhita has slept on the divan, not daring to say she would so much rather be on the floor, her senses are on the alert, she gets up ten times a night, puts her hands onto the agonizing stomach, but knows that all is well. Parona Michieli can feel her stomach relaxing, at the Moretta’s touch the solid rock of it turns to liquid, and her fears come down a notch, she even manages to go back to sleep briefly.

  * * *

  —

  Bakhita is moved, as if seeing this, witnessing it for the first time. Even though she has seen so many births, whether celebrated or dreaded, to happy women or young girls torn apart by the pain, babies that were kept and babies that were handed over, mothers with empty hands and others like her own, a tree with its branches, she has seen so many children brought into the world, and so many worlds. She is seventeen, knows she will never have children, her slave’s body told her so, withering under the blows. The parona will give birth lying down, and she is amazed to see her immobilized when she is to take this most intense of exercise, thinks of a gazelle being hobbled before being forced to run. But says nothing, and when the midwife arrives on the third day, the woman waves the Moretta out of the room. The serious business is about to start.

  * * *

  —

  It is a little girl. The parona calls her Alice Allessandrina Augusta. Her birth is telegraphed to the father, and the whole village is in the know. Maria Michieli has finally succeeded! It is a girl, but she is happy all the same, and perhaps Augusto will be too, who knows, his wife will do better next time, they shall have a son. A few hours later, night is falling and the priest is summoned. The holy sacraments must be administered very quickly, before even a church baptism. The child will not survive. At Maria Michieli’s bedside, the priest murmurs words in Latin and makes signs that Bakhita does not understand. His voice is gentle and desolate, he would like to have a few words with the mother, but Maria recites her prayers without conviction, staring ahead into a future that does not exist. She does not cry, is dull-witted and exhausted. She no longer wants to see the baby, or touch her, has already stopped loving her, loathes her. The midwife comes back and binds her breasts in resigned silence, vigorously tightening the white bandages, which are stained already, then leaves the house with obvious relief. The Moretta is allowed to stay. Waiting alongside the mother until the baby, now that she has been blessed, surrenders her purified soul to heaven.

  * * *

  —

  The night grows heavier, grows deep and silent, there is condensation on the windows and flickering lamplight, there is the smell of blood and sweat, and this oppressive tiredness. The room is closed, cut off from the world, everyone has fled the sorrow, and time trickles by for these three individuals alone—the mother, the child, and the servant—with death drawing closer like the smear of inevitability.

  * * *

  —

  The two women do not look at each other. The child who will die is alone in her cradle, and her suffering pervades the whole room. She is a tiny little creature, with a huge helpless presence. Bakhita comes over to the cradle that Parona Michieli asked to have placed far from her, at the other end of the room. Watches little Alice’s bluish face, her shallow breathing, hoarse breaths, is reminded of a river hampered by a rock, can hear the current of this water held back, and can see life battling against the power of an already accepted death. And so she does something she has done only once, such a long time ago, when she escaped from Taweisha: She does not ask permission. She picks up the baby, takes off her clothes, sits down, and lies the little creature across her knees, spits on her hands, and massages the baby’s chest, slowly, speaking soft incoherent words, her face so close to the little body that the parona can see only her mass of tightly curled hair and tilted neck. The baby grizzles weakly, hoarsely, Bakhita is caught up in the litany of her words and gestures, her dark voice mingling with the child’s scant breathing, wood can be heard crackling in the fireplace, spitting and snapping, and the baby coughs harder and harder, and this is a language that Bakhita understands, a language of pain and revolt. She spits on her hands again, and massages, and talks, her face right up against the baby’s face, receiving her coughing and crying as if they were a gift intended for her.

  * * *

  —

  The parona stays silent, a dispossessed spectator, she feels hope bloom again, along with a refusal to acknowledge this hope. Bakhita lifts the child up, holding her under her arms, she is suffocating, choking on her mucus. Bakhita lies the baby down again, takes her little head in her hand, puts her mouth over her nose, sucks hard, and spits onto the floor. Several times, very quickly, almost without catching her breath, she sucks up the mucus and spits it out. A process as noisy and dirty as life itself. Repetitive, instinctive, authoritative. And when at last the baby has stopped crying in pain but cries with hunger, Bakhita dresses her again and brings her to her mother. The parona shrinks away from her, her eyes ask the Moretta whether she would be mad to risk this, but in a slow steady movement, Bakhita removes the long white bandage and releases her mistress’s breasts. She says the word she loves, says it in her deep voice: Madre. And shows her what to do. Because she, the parona, must do this. She must suckle her daughter.

  * * *

  —

  She will be nicknamed “Mimmina.” A nickname like a kiss, a delicious treat, an unbounded tenderness. And it is to Bakhita that Maria Michieli entrusts her. She has agreed to nurse her, but the Moretta must stay by her side, she is afraid the baby will get it wrong, will not “take” enough, or too much, and she does not know how to burp her, or change her, or wash her, hardly dares to touch her, this powerful and mysterious little thing. She has the baby’s cradle moved into the servant’s room, up there, over the stables, and day and night, Bakhita brings her down for her feedings. The roles are reversed, the Moretta is the mother and the mother becomes the wet nurse. What does it matter. Maria Michieli gave up caring what the good people of Zianigo think long ago, her husband is far away and her in-laws are stupid. She watches like an anxious enthralled spectator as her daughter grows, and her pride swells in tandem with her contempt for this world that has always rejected her.<
br />
  Bakhita does not put the baby in her cradle to sleep. But cuddles her close, under the sheets. Her days and nights are now nothing but this, this constant appointment with the baby. One evening when the full moon is violent and red, as big as the sun, she holds the child up to it and speaks her name three times. This does not say what the world was like the day Mimmina was born, it says how the world changed the day she was born.

  * * *

  —

  It is both a profound joy and a privation rekindled. With the baby resting against her, Bakhita weeps for her own mother, the need for her surfaces in good moments just as it surfaced in hell, an absence that can never be filled and that is conjured by everything. She wishes she could share this substitute motherhood with her, but also be returned to this state as a tiny powerful life in the arms of the woman she called “mama” in a forgotten language. Be the mother and the child. A love like this. But she feels broken in two and is astonished by the strength of this absence, will her whole life be hampered by this irreplaceable love? She rocks Mimmina, and thanks her for being alive. Within the love she gives the child are all the people she has loved and who have been ripped from her, lives known and lost, discreet searing wounds. With her eyes locked onto Bakhita’s, Mimmina’s unfocused gaze concentrates and replies, and no one would suspect what they say to each other in their invented language, what they give each other in their cuddles and shared sleep. Their two lives are connected, both saved and now inextricable.